2005 Foot In Mouth Awards

jollyroger1210 writes "Wired is running a story on the 2005 Foot In Mouth Awards." From the article: "Tech execs say the darndest things. And so do shuffling presidents, and disgraced scientists, and Wikipedia fakers. It's time to relive 2005's biggest spoken gaffes."

Comments

Save you the trouble:

[imstanny]

The best one by far:

"I know what I don't know, and to this day I don't know technology and I don't know accounting and finance."

-- Bernie Ebbers, ex-CEO of WorldCom

Re:Save you the trouble:

[hashish]

I know what I don't know and I forgot.

Re:Save you the trouble:

[tuxette]

I'm not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean...

Re:Save you the trouble:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, here's a better one

"(Telecoms) and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!"

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I bet that the internet bills for Yahoo and Google are quite high. They already pay enough. It's like saying that tele-marketers use phone lines for free, so they should pay a special "tax" to the kind phone companies.

Re:Save you the trouble:

[ultranova]

It's like saying that tele-marketers use phone lines for free, so they should pay a special "tax" to the kind phone companies.

Bad example. If phone companies would pay half to the customer receiving the call and keep half for themselves, both customers, phone companies and the society in general would benefit (in the form of increased tax profits and less stress for people leading to less illnesses).

In general, if you want to argue against some proposal, it is best to avoid any analogies where the proposal is equaled to wiping out influenza, smallpox, AIDS, cancer, traffick jams, bloodsucking insects, telemarketers or anything else that everyone hates.

Re:Save you the trouble:

[Strolls]

I'm not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean...

Ok... really off-topic here.... but I associate that lyric with Suzanne Vega... but for the life of me my searches are not returning a song or album title under which she might have recorded it. only Edie Brickell. Can anyone help me out here?

Damn, I hope no-one says anything insightful or stupid in this thread... I have mod points & I'm itching to use 'em.

Stroller.

Re:Save you the trouble:

[Myrk]

"What I Am" by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians

Track #1 on "Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars"

Re:-5, Redundant

[bioteq]

I'm going to sacrafice some karma for this, but I truly don't care.

First of all, who cares if Slashdot posts it a little late?

Honestly, Some of us do not visit 'digg' or any of that crap. Why? Becasue it's full of little children who have no idea what they're talking about.

So if it was posted there first, who cares? No one, except for you and the other 'anti-slashdot' kids. If you're so enthralled in the fact that 'digg' posts it first then, guess what? Go there and read digg.

I, personally, am going to stay here at slashdot. Why? Because I can actually get smarter by reading some posts. I just got more ignorant trying to decrypt the aol-leet-speek-kid posts at Digg.

Slashdot may have it's share of problems, but it also has some great minds that read it and contribute.

Re:-5, Redundant

[earthstar]

You should also realise that digg posts links to slashdot stories as stories too.

Re:-5, Redundant

[iLogiK]

I actually hate digg (and relative to the usual /. crowd, you might call me a "kid")
I went to the site a few times, and I almost never found something that would interest me that I haven't already read here.
so what if they post it a few minutes/hours earlier (sometimes)? like you said, it's about the quality of the comments...

did you see

[manojar]

as technology improves, the number of FIM quotes too increase! Compare this with the classic quotes like "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
they don't make funny quotes like that any more.

Re:did you see

[Coneasfast]

"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

1. bill gates denies ever saying this
2. even if he did say it, it was probably true at the time, if i say today '2gb ought to be enough for anyone' , you're not gonna think i'm crazy, you're probably gonna agree with me, this quote doesn't say 640k will ALWAYS be enough

Re:did you see

[robnauta]

The "640K should be enough for everybody" quote was made by an IBM official. The first IBM PC had the CGA or MGA graphics at memory address 0xB0000 or 0xB8000. The EGA card which was introduced with the IBM AT in 1984 had its memory at 0xA0000, limiting system memory to 640K. The quote was made in response to accusations that IBM needlessly limited system memory to 640 K by putting it at 0xA0000 when it could also have used 0xD0000 or higher.
It has nothing to do with Microsoft. MS-DOS would use up to 768 K without problems if you didn't have an EGA or VGA card.

Re:did you see

[Vo0k]

Well, both points true. Now what about:
"Internet is just a passing fancy"?

BTW, if you today make a statement of "2gb ought to be enough for anyone" that doesn't mean the right approach is to design the system in such a way that developers will have to go through countless hoops to address anything above 2gb.
Couldn't IBM make page offset interval == page length and claim the 65520 unused values are "reserved for future use" (and be able to address 4GB of RAM out of the box) instead of wasting them all on overlaying pages of memory, creating additional problems for the developers?

Re:did you see

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

I set up a DOS machine with 992k of free DOS memory. The trick is to redirect command.com to com1 and don't use any programs that use graphics. Also, use DR-DOS, it's smaller than MS-DOS.

Re:did you see

[Tim Browse]

Also, use DR-DOS, it's smaller than MS-DOS.

Yeah, I'll get right on that.

Re:did you see

[oakgrove]

K in this instance appears to be an abbreviation for Kilobyte.

Re:did you see

[Detritus]

Couldn't IBM make page offset interval == page length and claim the 65520 unused values are "reserved for future use" (and be able to address 4GB of RAM out of the box) instead of wasting them all on overlaying pages of memory, creating additional problems for the developers?

No. That would create more problems than it solved. An 8086 program is composed of a set of segments, some small, some large. The segment registers make these segments addressable by the CPU. A system with 128K of RAM can have hundreds of segments. The 8086 addressing hardware forces an alignment restriction of 16 bytes on segments. Your scheme would create an alignment restriction of 64K on segments.

The 8086 was designed to support high level languages like PL/M and Pascal. It was not designed to be a VAX-like system running C with a linear address space.

Re:did you see

[l00sr]

It has nothing to do with Microsoft. MS-DOS would use up to 768 K without problems if you didn't have an EGA or VGA card.

Yeah. 768K should be enough for anyone.

Re:did you see

[Vo0k]

A well written program is fully relocable and doesn't care about segments/location in the memory. Good architecture makes writing relocable programs easier. Good compilers compile code to be relocable. And in the end the "feature" appeared to be a horrible misfeature resulting in XMS, EMS and all these horrible kludges that haunt us till today.
Did you know XBox was broken thanks to a security hole dating back to 8080/8086 times and poor workarounds to the problems this horrible "feature" introduced?

Re:did you see

[ultranova]

Did you know XBox was broken thanks to a security hole dating back to 8080/8086 times and poor workarounds to the problems this horrible "feature" introduced?

This proofs that Intel plans for the future - they were working on how to defeat DRM 20 years before it arrived, and no one realized anything !-)

Re:did you see

[Eristone]

hmm.. call bull malarkey on this one. System ROM is a 64K block and starts at F000 - which means the top of memory would be at 960K and the max you could get if you didn't have to load in DOS. (assuming of course you were able to get the system to ignore the video ROMs in the B000 range - which isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to do)

Re:did you see

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

this is so true that some late PC-XTs here in brasil had 704 kB of ram availlable to DOS. after loading up MS-DOS you still had some 640-650 kB of _free_ memory. this was made by reclaiming some memory reserved for graphics that wasn't neccessary.

Re:did you see

[BillyBlaze]

4 GB, however, really should be enough for anybody.

Re:did you see

[John Courtland]

If you wanted high performance graphics/sound you had no choice but to directly access memory. Using BIOS calls was out of the question for grahpics due to speed limitations, and you couldn't set up nonblocking sound buffers for any SB/clone larger than 64KB without DMA. Don't forget, that as an application developer in DOS, you had NO OS support for pretty much everything outside of file IO and little petty utilities like string output.

Let's say you wanted a custom timer back in 1990 to draw 320x200x8bit graphics at 25fps in DOS? There were no TimerProc(), KillTimer(), device contexts or any of that to help. You had to write your own service to draw the screen (probably using a back buffer, and then a bitblt over to 0xA000:0000), grab the BIOS timer IRQ interrupt vector (08h on IRQ line 0) from the IV table, reprogram the PIC to the frequency you wanted, do some simple math to determine how often to call the BIOS timer or else the system time went nuts until it was reread from the BIOS, which usually only happens during a reboot (MS Flight Simulator 4 did this), then when your application is finished, you have to undo everything you did or you lose all BIOS services related to the timer IRQ. DMA was worse because it always asked you where to look for its data and it could only fill like 64K at once, so you had to wtrite another interrupt for when it filled up 50% of the way so you could back fill the buffer with more sound without the analog output popping. Whew. Lots of ametuer game programming tips are coming back to me, it's sorta fun.

Re:did you see

[Vo0k]

Somehow Motorola+Commodore avoided all these problems in Amiga. You tell all this as if there was no other, better way. There was. There were way better, more programmer-friendly architectures. Who would worry if special registers are located at 0xA000:0000 or 0xC000:0000 if both meant upper 3rd-4th gigabyte? Who would worry about reogramming the PIC if you had maybe 8 GOOD resolutions predefined in the hardware, each with a good range of colors, and ability to add more by programming the color co-GPU? Just point ECS/AGA at the screen buffer and it does all the reading and timing by itself, sending what it produces to the screen and generating interrupts for you to know when to swap buffers and start filling the other one. With help of Blitter to move bigger areas around. 320x256x6bit at 60fps, easy. CPU 8MHz. RAM was a big common pool with common access for all the hardware, and all the chips were self-sufficient enough that you'd just set them up and they'd keep doing whatever you told them. No need to micromanage the gfx chip, you just tell it to display, and then all you worry about is that the memory area to display contains what you want on screen and that you don't get caught with your pants down writing in the middle of the display area when it is being displayed.

Re:did you see

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

You turn can use the lower part of the f000 because it's POST instructions and the BIOS setup stuff. Some BIOSes (MR bios iirc) tell you on POST what you can use. Again, iirc, f000-fb00 was available.

There are no video ROMS at b000, that is the monochrome display area. Don't write to the screen and you can use it as a UMB.

I forgot to mention you can only get 992k free on a 286 or greater machine, they can actually address 1088k directly.

Re:did you see

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

If memory still cost $100/MB, you would.

There are still commercial products using DR-DOS, fwiw.

Re:did you see

[John Courtland]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the IBM PC. Those devices did not have nearly the market penetration that the IBM PC had/has, and therefore does it really matter that they were better? I'm sure they were great, but the long and short of it is that if you wanted a graphical program with any kind of speed and wanted to make a living from it, you were writing IBM PC code (and Motorola to a certain extent). Theory is nice but so is money.

Re:did you see

[SharpFang]

Sorry, bullshit.
PCs were the office market for a LONG time. Only sometime around Pentium MMX they started becoming home computers. Mainly because of horrible marketing of Commodore and high price tag on Apple.
If you wanted a graphical program, you would stay FAR AWAY from PCs. Amiga or Mac for drawing, modelling, SGI for rendering. Amiga 4000 served in multiple TV stations long after PentiumII entered the market, because it was far superior. Software like Scala Multimedia was used till early 00's in major TV stations.
Sure, spreadsheets, databases, text processors, these were all in domain of PC. AutoCAD too. But few others, and no professional graphician would take a PC seriously as a work tool before 98 or so. And around 96, Amiga got a new lease of life in form of AmosPRO. A language so easy everyone could use it, so powerful it allowed access to deepest resources of the computer easily, and pretty fast to that. PC was nowhere near there then, writing apps for Win95 was a horrible process. Sure there was more RAM and CPU power, but even the fastest PC CPUs couldn't move chunks of screen around as fast as Amiga's dedicated hardware. A Pentium MMX 166 was barely comparable to a 16MHz Amiga 1200 in means of usable speed. And thanks to some hardware hacks, everything looked vastly better on Amiga. Take this simple invention, "round pixels". Hardware would smooth the edges of pixels, making two adjacent pixels a line, 4 pixels in a block a circle etc. Squarish 320x200 in 256 colors on VGA looked HORRIBLE - square bricks - comparing to smooth, no pixels visible, Amiga's 320x256 in Halfbrite (64 colors).
Amiga didn't die because it was worse. It died because it didn't get enough updates, growth. Commodore didn't release anything better, while PCs were improving. Macs never gained much of the market because they were expensive. And for too long, 'toy computers'. PCs got cheap, available and raw power compensated for design shortcomings. Who wants great design of CPU that runs 16MHz when you can have 300MHz of worse design for the same price?

Re:did you see

[John Courtland]

What. Seriously, you must be retarded. First, I said, to paraphrase, "sure the Amiga or whatever computer you like to masturbate over is better." I'll be the first to say it: The IBM PC is a total hack. I wrote assembler for it for 5 years, I know. So, your whole second paragraph is coming out of nowhere to me.

Second, you've got your timetables off a bit. The PC was HUGE for video games in the 486 era, and companies like Sierra were making PC games back in 1985.

And I don't care what you say, there is no way a production 16MHz chip could ever outrun a production 300MHz chip, period. Find me a 16MHz SGI machine, or whatever RISC hard-on chip you like from back then, and I'll take a 300MHz Pentium 2 and stomp it into shit. That said, I will reiterate that I KNOW the fucking 8086 platform is a hack, always has been. But what YOU seem to fail to acknowledge, is that none of that shit matters if it doesn't have market share. This converstaion started because someone was saying something about virtualized memory, and how since the XBox is a derivative of the 8086 arch, that it has a security hole, which was a response to why the 8086 used 12-bit memory segments (resulting in overlapping segments). I don't even understand how since the XBox should have been faulted into 32-bit protected mode unless MS is stupid, but I never looked at the exploit so I'll state that I must simply misunderstand what was meant by the grandparent. However, when it comes down to it, the IBM PC, despite its shittastic architecture, was the winner. And I was explaining to the grandparent, through a real-life programming example, why you couldn't have these things he was talking about. When it comes down to it, the name of the game was DOS/IBM and to say "well, I only want to work on Amigas" means you weren't employed/weren't as profitable, which in the end (sadly), is all that really matters.

Re:did you see

[SharpFang]

Find me a 16MHz SGI machine, or whatever RISC hard-on chip you like from back then, and I'll take a 300MHz Pentium 2 and stomp it into shit.

I said -usable- speed.
I'll take my Amiga 600 with 2MB of RAM, switch it on, load Workbench in 12 seconds, then will be editing an image in DeluxePaint in another 10 seconds, with music playing in the background.
Do the same with Windows XP and a gfx program of your choice on a 300MHZ CPU. Try this even on a 4GHZ CPU. With 64MB RAM :P

Sure Amiga is poor at number crunching, but good I/O made for great, fast, responsive, comfortable user interface, and easy programming resulted in fast, short, efficient programs. Programming PC is a hell, so different toolboxes, APIs etc were made to make it easier, and they are horribly heavyweight. Result? What on some 4 MIPS took 10 cycles, on 4 GIPS takes 20,000.
PC won, it's a fact. Not by quality or performance, but by right marketing decisions. Apple didn't tackle the opportunity to lower prices and go out to the masses, and others died due to stagnation and horrible marketing. And that's the only reason why I can't have "these things he was talking about". Because good design is dead, ugly hack rules.
The name of the game wasn't DOS/IBM, except in business/office environment. Times of DOS were times of variety. DOS for office, Mac and Amiga for studio, 8-bit toys for kids, VAXes, SGIs and all the other big iron for universities and computational centres. Amstrad, Commodore, Atari, Spectrum, Tandy, hundreds of brand names. IBM was nowhere near the top. Before it gained domination, DOS was dead. Win311 was dying. IBM was on the treshold of bankruptcy. The market got flooded with cheap taiwaneese clones. The name of the game was Win95 and Pentium.

I don't even understand how since the XBox should have been faulted into 32-bit protected mode

http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/17_Mistakes_Microso ft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System#The_A20_Hack

Nice?

Re:did you see

[John Courtland]

Well, if you had a 386 or above, running in unprotected flat 32-bit mode, you could easily see 2 cycle ADD, 2 cycle SUB, 20 cycle MUL, insanely horrible division. With a pentium, on the other hand, you had pretty much 1 cycle math no matter what, even most FP math could be executed in 1-2 cycles, and you had two units to boot, V and U. You could schedule your math and get a great performance boost. Now the thing with windows XP is that it's extremely bloated and complex. I will cede the fact that it will not work as well as an Amiga in that regard, simply because XP is a hog, although it provides a LOT more services than the Amiga did. A stripped linux kernel would be a better comparison. Although X is sucky too... Oh well, Can't win em all.

I don't know about that DOS/IBM not being the leader in the household. Almost every friend I had had either a Mac or a PC. It was just that way. Apple ruled for a while, because that's what they put in the schools, but the PC had marketing. Also, the era I'm referring to is the very early 90's. I think VAX was already toast by then, so perhaps our little misunderstanding is due to this. Amiga was definitely not doing too well, Amstrad was almost gone, Atari was a memory, Tandy was no longer Tandy.

Re:did you see

[SharpFang]

So the first, you concede - no matter what the CPU, the OS requirements overtake Moore's law progress, we're better off with first, old CPU-OS pairs than the new ones. (of course I agree, Win95 on P4 is a pretty fast and responsive OS :)

I don't know about that DOS/IBM not being the leader in the household. Almost every friend I had had either a Mac or a PC. It was just that way. Apple ruled for a while, because that's what they put in the schools, but the PC had marketing.

I was talking about Europe. I don't know nor remember the situation in the US. I know Amigas were never really tall there. I can just recall the jawdrop of my PC friend when I took my A600 with me and let him play Test Drive 2 on it. Neither the best Amiga nor the best Amiga game, but in exchange he let me play some game (sorry too drunk ATM to recall, a famous one) Dragon something IIRC. Fantasy hack&slash including riding on birdlike mounts, maybe you recall.) I was less than impressed because it was CGA or EGA mode and looked worse than best games I played on Atari and WAY worse than what was the worst available for Amiga.

Also, the era I'm referring to is the very early 90's. I think VAX was already toast by then, so perhaps our little misunderstanding is due to this.
AFAIR VAX was doing well as the big iron for quite long. As my first touch with big irons was when Vax was long dead, I can just tell what I heard so don't take this too seriously.

Amiga was definitely not doing too well, Amstrad was almost gone, Atari was a memory, Tandy was no longer Tandy. ...when? Early 90's definitely no. Late 90's definitely yes. '95 Amiga was in the most lively period of its death [;)] and AFAIK Amiga never took off in the States. In Poland, '2000 was still a good year for Amigas in TV studios. It was just really good at this.

Then capitalism got really high in Poland. TV got enough money to afford custom solutions, that costed maybe 500-1000 times as much as Amiga-based ones (I know because some press tried to wreak havoc by announcing how much the TV spends on its "upgrades") but performed at least slightly better than Amigas.

The first steps "beyond Amiga" were very expensive for the TV. Really, news logo animated at twice the resolution previous Amiga logo was, caused quite a bit of outrage, costing about 500 times what the previous one did. But the new zone of commercials was followed by some big money which was spent on improvements in quality. Small improvements for incredibly high price increase, but they happened.

Re:-5, Redundant

[bioteq]

Err, I didn't mean 'kid' as in a younger person. Because, as you said, relative to the slashdot crowd, I took am a kid. 21.

I meant kid as in the mental competence of a kid (you know, those people who haven't hit teenage years yet.)

And no, i'm not calling anyone old either. I just know some of the bigger geeks of us (The ones I look up to, actually) are in their 30's or higher, so we're 'kids' in terms of age.

ridiculous

[ArbitraryConstant]

Sony's only on there once.

Makes me giggle

[Yonkeltron]

This is actually rather funny. I only hope that the people who made the comments realize how silly/offbase/nuts they sounded.

Re:Makes me giggle

[Gonoff]

they sounded

Some comments that now sound ludicrous probably sounded quite reasonable where and when they were made. The memory one that is attributed to Bill Gates and that IBM one about how many computers the world would need, were quite sensible in the light of knowledge at the time.

I don't think GWB and other dodgy executives have the same excuse though...

Re:Makes me giggle

[LaCosaNostradamus]

The memory one that is attributed to Bill Gates and that IBM one about how many computers the world would need, were quite sensible in the light of knowledge at the time.

No, they were NOT. They were only "sensible" from the standpoint of an opinion held by market suppliers who constantly attempt to not FULFILL market needs, but to SET market needs. Their validity was merely an illusion or shadow cast by the presence of POWER, not reality.

All of this truth is an important reason why big companies fail. They get beyond arrogance and blatantly steer markets ... while customers (remember them?) get turned off by the jack-boot tactics and seek alternatives.

While Mr Billions was squawking about the limits of needs, any fucking idiot could see that more memory could result in the manipulation of more stuff. Any complete twat could see that the average manager's 48x96 desk was far more useful than the single open document on a 7x9 green-phosphor screen. And then it's an easy step to see beyond textual information.

The notable gaffes of Gates and his ilk are well presented. The real market knew their statements were bullshit ... but individual market elements don't get much rebuttal to statements of limits EXCEPT in the action of the market. Market action is the test of truth, not what some overpaid White guy in a suit thinks, says, or even does.

Don't.

[Vo0k]

Screwing it would scratch the screen. Don't screw it.

The forgot

[ms1234]

this guy http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/23/15 13203&tid=141&tid=158&tid=3&tid=106

Old news

[VistaBoy]

We're talking about the biggest spoken gaffes in 2005, not 2004. Both of your links are dated in 2004.

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that means the GP wins the 2005 Meta-Foot in Meta-Mouth award.

Re:Don't forget Gunga Dan

[sgant]

Nice! Also bring it up next year too for the end of 2006 foot-in-mouth awards. And the year after that.

Since this story was 2004 and you brought it up, (as I'm guessing to beat this very dead, rotting horse one more time) you seem to be wanting to make this an annual tradition!

Check the link you provided btw. Thursday, September 16, 2004.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Osty]

Well, considering the Mororola RAZR phone is one of the hottest-selling out there, and the Apple iTunes phone is a flop, I'd say I believe the guy from Motorola.

You know, the "Apple iTunes phone" is made by Motorola, and actually was the subject of that quote. The Nano and the ROKR (like the RAZR, but with iTunes compatibility) were released around the same time, and the quote is basically saying, "Screw the Nano. Get a ROKR and you can have your iTunes songs and a phone all in the same unit." Of course, the ROKR is sucking pretty bad, and the Nano has been insanely popular. Thus, foot in mouth.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[lowid (24) _________]

Well, considering the Mororola RAZR phone is one of the hottest-selling out there, and the Apple iTunes phone is a flop, I'd say I believe the guy from Motorola.

Well, considering the ipod nano is one of the hottest selling mp3 players out there, and the itunes phone is made by motorola, I'll go with apple.

Re:-5, Redundant

[Rocketship Underpant]

Well said! Regular readers all know that Slashdot, editorially, is fairly mediocre. Awful editing and spelling, frequent duplicate posts, and so on. But it's the moderation system and comments that make it shine. Where else can you read astrophysicists discuss the latest astronomy finding, or professional engineers dissecting the latest technology invention? Thanks to moderation, the best posts rise to the top.

The one time I visited Digg, I found the comments worthless.

Fear Not, Slashdotters!

[Armadni General]

Chair-to-the-wall has won Number Two!

"'I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google.'"
-Steve Ballmer

Excellent.

Re:Fear Not, Slashdotters!

[CvD]

Obligatory: "The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage"

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Aurix]

"Well, considering the Mororola RAZR phone is one of the hottest-selling out there"

I don't think you have a clue as to what is a hot-selling phone. I work in a phone store (by all means I think we're representative of Queensland, Australia) and we struggled to get our only Motorola V300 RAZR out the door.

Motorola is complete crap and have been for years. They're just not a serious competitor against far better offerings from Nokia and other manufacturers.

Re:MODERATORS READ THIS!!!

[h4rm0ny]

I have mod points, but there's no option for +3 Guilt Trip. Really - it's fine. The World forgives you.

This was funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Walk this way, talk this wa-ay."

-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett

The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet.

Watching the video, I was amused trying to determine who was actually the older white guy...

The whole demo with the crazy kids is pretty awkward too. Tyler gives a little speech to the audience... *shudder*

Re:-5, Redundant

[tsa]

Digg comment: Huh huh. Cool, dude. /. comment: This is a really interesting device. Pity it doesn't run Linux.

Re:-5, Redundant

[Bayleaf]

Oh how I wish I was in my thirties again!

Re: or how about this one from President Taft!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, get over it. Like the Swift Boat Vets, the Dan Rather story is more a case of corruption and blog bullying than anything else, it's definitely not "a return to truth in journalism", or whatever you may think it is. They decided what they wanted to say, shoved their fingers in their ears and screamed "it's fake" until someone noticed.

It was more about PR cleanup than fact checking. The question is not "is this legit?", but "how can we manipulate belief"? They had people discussing how to tear it down within 10 or 15 minutes of its first airing. The qualifications of the people discussing the matter? Well, it's a memo. You could ask people in print manufacturing, or forensics. You could ask an army desk jockey. You could even ask any secretary old enough to have used one of those typewriters. Instead, it was freepers, marketing people, PR, politicians, newscasters, paid political operatives(bloggers!), and the like. Oh, and a few computer guys. Most weren't even born yet in the era of that typewriter or Bush's service.

Me? I work in printing. The family business is printing, and my father was in computer repair for decades. My childhood was spent with inky fingers, learning programming or fixing hardware. So, I know both areas pretty well, and I didn't buy it. The really clever thing is that the real point of the matter was "did Bush fulfill obligations?" not the placement of a fucking letter or apostrophe. Kudos on making sure the voting public avoided that question and discussed decades old typewriters instead.

It's an exercise in the efficiency of the conservative political machine. You're not even discussing the topic at hand. You're discussing 2004 in a "let's remember 2005" comments section. We should both be modded for being offtopic. And you should learn that you can't reuse calenders.

What about Quark CEO?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall reading how the CEO of Quark Express had slipped so far into desperation due to Adobe's onslaught with its CS Suite that he posted some unprofessional and offensive comments, hoping to show that newest Quark offering was more "hip." Something to do with orgies.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Re:What about Quark CEO?

[Schickie]

No, not yet, but I'm working on it.

Googling quark got me a Franfurter retailer flogging soft cheese, (besides the obvious Physics sites), but I still don't get the mud brick connection.

Pay Again For Telecoms?

[GaryPatterson]

I love the last one, in which the guy conveniently forgets that customers do actually pay for the telecom connections, usually in monthly line fees (well, here in Australia my fees well outweigh my call costs) and call costs.

Sure! Let's pay for the same stuff twice! Because we're stupid!

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Draveed]

The V300 and RAZR are different phones. The RAZR is also called the V3, which I assume is where your confusion comes from.

$100 laptop

[Rickler]

"Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop -- I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget.'"
-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett

Who is getting the foot in the mouth here? Mr. Negroponte?

Re:$100 laptop

[badasscat]

"Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop -- I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget.'"
-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett

Who is getting the foot in the mouth here? Mr. Negroponte?

Not unless you think making fun of inexpensive computers for poor children in developing countries is insightful.

Re:$100 laptop

[agent_blue]

poor children in developing countries need food/water/shelter/clothing, not hand cranked computers. what are they going to do with these things? play "mavis beacon teaches typing" and "oregon trail"? how about 100 dollars per kid goes to books,paper,pencils, teachers.

this whole 100 dollar laptop thing is kind of like "let them have cake."

Re:$100 laptop

[valkraider]

poor children in developing countries need food/water/shelter/clothing, not hand cranked computers. what are they going to do with these things? play "mavis beacon teaches typing" and "oregon trail"? how about 100 dollars per kid goes to books,paper,pencils, teachers.

I think the computers also would have shipped with one free Sony/BMG CD each...

Re:$100 laptop

[pedroloco]

this whole 100 dollar laptop thing is kind of like "let them have cake."

Maybe, maybe not. Schools in developing countries may not have libraries or access to teaching materials, and a set of classroom computers with an internet connection could be of benefit to students.

Of course, the usefulness of such computers depends on the availability of low-bandwidth web resources provided in local languages. An English-only online textbook which requires a broadband connection isn't going to be useful to a Swahilli-speaking school connected via modems.

Re:$100 laptop

[emilper]

I think you have a rather strange idea what do the poor children from developing countries need ... I guess you watched way too many "save the children", "unesco", "Give Me a Fat Salary to Save the Poor Children" Inc. commercials. Except for the war zones, the poor children in the developing countries already have food/water/shelter/clothing. The large majority even have reliable electricity/radio/TV/internet coverage.

What the generic "poor children from the developing countries" need right now is access to information. They don't need charity, and the 100$ laptop is not charity. The laptops are going to be bought by their governments, and the parents of the "poor children from the developing countries" already pay hefty taxes to their governments (some argue that these taxes are the main reason those countries are still "developing").

What is special about the 100$ laptop is that it is no longer a prestige comodity used mainly to assert status, but a useful tool: waterproof, dustproof, shock resistant, long battery life, high contrast screen. As of now, I don't know of any laptop that matches these specifications and that can be bought in stores. Computers used to be status markers besides being business machines. Now they are being turned into tools available to everyone. You might still be proud that you have a 4GB computer with 4GB of RAM, but you don't need to feel proud that you have a stailess steel kitchen knife ... soon you won't feel the need to boast about your computer.

Maybe you should revise your data on the developing countries ... after all, the new jobs US companies are creating are moved outside of US because, well, we are no longer in the '50s, and the rest of the world is no longer in ruin after 6 years of war ... on the contrary, the rest of the world is catching up with U.S. of A.

Re:$100 laptop

[emilper]

s/a 4GB computer with/a 4GHz processor and/

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[johncadengo]

Motorola is complete crap and have been for years. They're just not a serious competitor against far better offerings from Nokia and other manufacturers.

Well, according to http://products.consumerguide.com/reviews/browse.e pub?sectionId=840:

Top Rated Mobile/Cell Phones
* Motorola EV-DO E815 CDMA Mobile Phone Review
* Nokia 3220 GMS Mobile Telephone Review
* LG Verizon Wireless VX7000 CDMA Mobile Phone Review
* Samsung SGH-e315 GSM Mobile Phone Review
* Motorola RAZR V3 GSM Mobile Phone Review

Motorola takes the #1 and #5 spots. That's 2/5 of the top 5 rated mobile phones. No other company takes more than one spot. So... What again?

Re:-5, Redundant

[metlin]

Oh, don't bother. For every article, there is an idiot who thinks that foobar website had it 3.247 minutes before Slashdot.

Who the hell bloody cares? Slashdot is one place where it will eventually show up, and one place where the discussions aren't full of crap.

Seriously, a message to the posters like the OP - get the hell off Slashdot. If you don't like this place, then what the hell are you doing here? At least, let those of us who like this place hang out and actually discuss stuff, rather than whining like a 13 year old about his zit.

I've seen a lot of these "alternative" to Slashdot websites. They're all full of crap. Slashdot is what it is not just because of the articles, but also because of its readers and posters. Now, take your whining elsewhere and let those of us who like the place discuss things related to the article.

Freakin' idiots.

Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

[deetsay]

1. bill gates denies ever saying this

Maybe he never said it out loud, but he designed... Well, someone working for him designed an operating system where all the upper memory management was left up to third-party tools, and you had to keep separate bootdisks for QEMM and HIMEM and no EMM.

2. even if he did say it, it was probably true at the time, if i say today '2gb ought to be enough for anyone' , you're not gonna think i'm crazy, you're probably gonna agree with me, this quote doesn't say 640k will ALWAYS be enough

Hey, isn't that exactly what Bill was saying with the 32-bit Windowses? 2gb total address space *including* virtual memory?

Re:-5, Redundant

[Wog]

Not only will everything eventually show up here, but it will appear two or three times!

Often successively, so that one does not accidentally scroll past a juicy morsel!

Seriously. I'm here for the comments. Screw the editors.

Re:-5, Redundant

[jcenters]

Digg for the headlines. Slashdot for the commentary.

Yeah, Digg's comments are pretty worthless, but I think it has to do more with how it's commenting system is set up more than the reader base. Slashcode, for all its flaws, has a really nice system to sort, write, and moderate comments. Meanwhile, Digg doesn't even have threads, making each comment more of an island than part of a discussion. And anyone who knows who the koolaidguy is knows that Digg's moderation needs some work.

In any case, its nice to see Slashdot finally have some competition.

Re:Bush...

[rolandog]

Indeed...

Mod +1 Funny, -1 Illiterate, +1 Link2doodie

Re:Please come forward

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have a hard time beliving that anyone would get offended by the real use of the word fuck:"

He actually said F-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk but when typing it out it's much easier to use *

Re:Please come forward

[Whiteox]

So, please, prove me wrong and come forward if you would get offended if Wired prited "fuck" instead of "f***".

Re:Please come forward

[Trurl's Machine]

Seriously, why is printing "f**k" so difficult? I'm from Europe and I really can't understand you Americans.

I'm from Europe too and I think I have an explanation. We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc. That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English - we imagine this country as populated mostly by hip handsome mobsters, private detectives in trench coats, muscular tatooed Afroamerican cocaine dealers able to rhyme everything with "mothafucka", bespectacled mad computer geniuses etc. When I set my foot for the first time on LAX, the biggest surprise for me was that actually everyone I met seemed to be nice and gentle, totally unlike what I have imagined from "Grand Theft Auto" or "Blade Runner" :). I guess you made a similar mistake as someone in America who would try to imagine Paris from the "Amelie" movie - it just depicts a nonexistent culture of a nonexistent city in a nonexistent country.

Re:-5, Redundant

[Hosiah]

but it also has some great minds that read it and contribute.

LOL, awwwww...THANK YOU!

Re:-5, Redundant

[Tim Browse]

The one time I visited Digg, I found the comments worthless.

Ah, it's not just me then. Good. Most of them seemed to be "Cool! I love this! Digg!!"

Slashdot comments are not by any stretch of the imagination uniformly good, but I have picked up an awful lot of information (or some combination of those words, at least) from comments over the years.

(Plus, I'm still not entirely sure how Digg's revolutionary system for readers voting on stories is different/better to kuro5hin's.)

(I'm not asking.)

The site is slashdotted...

[cciRRus]

So I am wondering if there is anything along the line of the "Sony Rootkit" incident in the awards... Any ideas?

Re:The site is slashdotted...

[philks]

"Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" -- Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business division The music giant responds in an NPR interview to complaints that anti-copying technology on some of its CDs creates serious security vulnerabilities in computers

Re:The site is slashdotted...

[networkBoy]

IMHO that should have been #1.
-nB

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Jetekus]

lol, were you confused by the typo in the second article calling the iTunes phone the "Rockr" rather than the ROKR, or dare I say you didn't RTFAs?

In case people haven't realised yet: THE ITUNES PHONE IS MADE BY MOTOROLA AND THE "TWO PHONES" IN THE PARENT POST ARE THE SAME PHONE

Sorry about the CAPS, but it seems incredible that noone seems to have paid heed to the corrections posted.

And to think you're currently being rated as insightful.

Re:Please come forward

[Aladrin]

It's a mindset thing. Americans are taught from birth that it is wrong (and possibly sinful) to say certain words. My mother still cringes when I say 'fuck' and I've said it a LOT.

To me, it's just a word. Like 'blimey'. Nobody screams bloody murder when you say 'blimey', and yet it's used in the same way.

Or let's look at replacement words... 'Frack' and 'frell' are a couple scifi replacements for 'fuck'. They are extremely obvious what they are, and yet nobody cares if they are said.

There are even other, more obvious words... Shit and crap are EXACTLY the same thing. Why is one a 'cuss word' and the other merely another word for excrement?

This bothered me for a few years and I spent those years cursing like a sailor. With reasonable people, it made no difference at all. But lately, it's gotten boring and I've decided to try to keep it to a minimum, mainly for something to do while I'm speaking. (Speech is boring and can use a lot of livening-up.)

Re:And the winner is ....

[Vo0k]

I've seen a nice one. In place of the banner killed by adblock:
"The site won't survive without money from ads. Switch off that adblock, please."

When she posts here.

[Grendel Drago]

When Mary Mapes posts here and tries to be clever, I'm sure she'll be greeted in the same fashion.

Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time a student writing a paper on Communism for a class on fascism and totalitarianism told his professor that he had been visited by agents of Homeland Security because he had placed a request for Chairman Mao's Little Red Book through the inter-library loan program.

Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/daily /12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm

There's just one little thing the student didn't count on...

Sometimes professors do not take things at face value, sometimes they actually do some research and they check things, they ask questions, and sometimes they notice inconsistencies.

They're smart like that. They really are. That's why professors are professors and why students are students, and why small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. But I digress...

Anyhow, to make a long story short, this student's professor asked some questions. This student's professor noticed some inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor asked the student's parents some questions. This student's professor found more inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor did even more checking.

In the end this student's professor found that not a single thing that the student had told him could be verified. The professor confronted his student who tearfully admitted that the story of being visited by agents of Homeland Security was a complete fabrication.

Federal agent's visit was a hoax
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/daily /12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm

This student's cobbled up story which had caused news articles and editorials to be written, which had caused much heated discussion on the Internet, in the end was unravelled and shot to pieces because the student's professor had not taken it at face value and had asked questions until he got at the truth of the matter.

Now, you may ask, who put their foot in their mouth in this story? Well, I'll tell you. Many people on the discussion board where you now read this very post put their feet in their mouths by spewing intemperate comments as a result of uncritically accepting the statements of a liar as the truth. I'd say that's a pretty good foot in the mouth story and a pretty good cautionary tale as well.

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[Oligonicella]

Very true. It's just a shame that the professor(s) couldn't find the time or inclination to investigate the story (as you say) before shooting their mouths off to the press.

No. The professors had their foots firmly in their mouths because the story as told them by the student very conviently fit into their "gov is bad" paradigm. The student played them like fish.

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[lagerbottom]

Ahh yes...sitting around strumming the fish.

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[Keebler71]

Thanks for the great post! Since the original story covered here drew well over 1000 comments (most of which were people spooling up about the Bush administration but with a few careful readers pointing out some inconsitencies) I figured that it would make for a good submission (if for nothing else than to discuss the dangers of internet hoaxes on the media). Unfortunately I was summarily rejected. Thanks for getting the word out!

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[antibryce]

Let's not paint the professor as a saint in all this. His role was to run to the media right away, and only after others started pointing out inconsistencies and asking for more details did he start to question the student's story. At this point he still refuses to name the student and I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was all made up by the professor.

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[Vitriol Angst]

The interesting thing was not that the FBI "visited a student" but that they COULD visit a student. The provisions of the Patriot Acts allow for this scenario. Citizens who are Pro-Liberty somehow have to get everything right when every act by Homeland Security can be made secret? All we can do is speculate because much of the real news of this day is not covered by the Main Stream Media.

So, a story was debunked and we can all rest our little heads -- nothing to see. I don't even know if this student existed -- how can any of us do anything but speculate?

You may be all gung ho about giving up our Constitution, but I'm not. No, people will not be "disappeared" -- not until all the rights of the citizen are gone. Proof of the abuse of the Patriot Act is not the reason it should be shredded. The Possibility of this Abuse is the reason the Patriot Act should be shredded and any politician who votes for such a power grab again should be looking for other areas of employment.

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[lysergic.acid]

"Now, you may ask, who put their foot in their mouth in this story? Well, I'll tell you. Many people on the discussion board where you now read this very post put their feet in their mouths by spewing intemperate comments as a result of uncritically accepting the statements of a liar as the truth. I'd say that's a pretty good foot in the mouth story and a pretty good cautionary tale as well."

Having a discussion on a news story based on the information provided is not putting your foot in your mouth. As you said, the professor questioned the student, and also his parents--that is how he arrived at the truth. How many slashdotters do you think would have had as easy access to the student or his parents for questioning?

Sometimes it's easy to verify the statements made by a news article. In these situations, one can be expected to do so before accepting dubious claims. But unless when this news story was originally posted on Slashdot you were there to say "Hey guys, that kid lied. Here's how I know..." then you can't expect others to have caught the lie. Whether people were defending the Homeland Security act or were detractors, no one suspected that the student's claims were made up since it didn't seem so unlikely to most people who participated in the discussion.

Re:Here's a really good foot in mouth story...

[lostboy2]

I'm sure this is off-topic... but you started it! :-)

Your point is valid and well-taken, but I think the reaction on Slashdot was equally valid and illuminating if only because it shows how many of us think that the student's tale wasn't that far-fetched.

While I was a bit skeptical of the student's story because it sounded too much like the movie Se7en, I thought back to when some government agents came to a library where a friend of mine worked and demanded access to some or all of the customers' reading/check-out histories. Thankfully, in that case, the librarians refused to release the information, but that was back in the early 1980's, before computers were cheap, before the World Wide Web and all the subsequent technology existed. Surely, the technology exists now for the feds to get that information without permission. And in light of the recent admission that the US Goverment authorized spying on US citizens without a warrant, it isn't ridiculous to think that the goverment might also be tapping into people's library records.

But, more to the point, while the student's tale may have turned out to be false, it is entirely valid for people to have spoken up about it, if only as a cautionary tale about what America could be like if we continue to surrender our civil rights without protest (if it's not like that already).

Our right to protest is one of the things that makes America great. This is Freedom of Speech at its best, in my opinion -- We are each other's bulls**t detectors. And that's a Good Thing.

So, thanks for following-up on that story -- I'm glad it turned out to be a hoax -- but I plan to continue to voice my concerns whenever I see something like that pop up. :-)

Fact:

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is populated by Old Mammals, and I'm one of them.

Just instantly identifying that lyric caused more hair to turn grey. Goddamnit....

Re:Fact:

[networkBoy]

:heh:
ditto. But damn I love that song.
-nB

Dude, they were fakes.

[Grendel Drago]

And here I thought the President had a monopoly on shooting the messenger.

Look, there was a story there. A valid story, about Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. A story that we won't get to hear or see now, because it's all been tarred with the fake-memo brush. Because Mapes and Rather thought the story wasn't quite good enough, they sexed it up... with faked evidence. How responsible were they? Well, they clearly didn't show the diligence that they were paid for.

And somehow you're saying it's the fault of Little Green Footballs that the memos were fakes? If I were a left-wing partisan hack, I'd be furious at Mapes and Rather for killing the TANG story. A six year old could have showed that they were fake. You're only embarrassing yourself by claiming otherwise.

Re:Bush...

[wjsteele]

To Quote The Great Peter Griffin.

"He he he... he said 'Doodie!'"

Bill

Re:Please come forward

[ezzzD55J]

Possibly an explanation. However, this time a guy (reportedly) actually saying fuck was being quoted. Why pussy-foot around that?

transferred to world health...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
-- Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business division

sounds like:

"Most people don't even know what AIDS is, so why should they care about it?"

Re:transferred to world health...

[Sj0]

Actually, it's an acceptable analogy. If I got hacked because I had a sony music CD, it'd be because some powerful person being a prick, just like millions of cases of aids are because the vatican still disapproves of condom use.

Re:transferred to world health...

[raoul666]

As bad as a rootkit is, please don't compare it to AIDS. There are a hell of a lot of friends, family, widows and orphans who would disagree with your comparison.

Re:transferred to world health...

[fatcatman]

just like millions of cases of aids are because the vatican still disapproves of condom use

Heh, you anti-religious people will say anything.

You're full of shit, by the way. Most AIDS cases happen in areas of the world where the Vatican has no control whatsoever.

Re:transferred to world health...

[StikyPad]

We'll compare it to car crashes then. Oops, they've killed tons more people than HIV. In fact, let's just avoid making comparisons to fatal things or events altogether. Let's see, that rules out disease, famine, animals, people, fire, water, solid objects, plastic bags, pillows, piano wire, seat belts, the sun, gravity, food, drugs, over exertion, under exertion, sudden compression, sudden decompression, aging, and OH MY GOD, it's almost as if anything can be fatal. Let's just avoid referencing any of it and stick our heads in the sand. Oh wait...

Re:transferred to world health...

[raoul666]

And why, exactly, wouldn't you compare it something security related? Like...a lock on one's house? A car alarm? You know, something that has something in common with it in some way.

Re:transferred to world health...

[Sj0]

I'm a Lutheran, you pretentious ass.

Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

[Zaatxe]

I helped developing a operating system kernel back in my university years and we also had this limit and that's because of the 386 memory management. We had to remap all the memory twice, one half to be accessed by programs and the other half to be accessed by the operating system in a root level (sorry, it was over 10 years ago, I don't really remember the details of why it was really needed). Since the 386 can address up to 4Gb of memory, half of this is 2Gb. Don't blame Bill Gates this time, blame Intel. (By the way, is there anyone there who knows Linux well enough to tell us if it also has this limit or something like that?)

Re:Anyone rember this gem from days past?

[lotus_out_law]

No..no.. It cannot be considered for this award.
It was actually not 'foot' in the mouth, you see ......

Re:Please come forward

[Oligonicella]

Je-heez-us, what a bunch of conflationary horse crap.

Re:Please come forward

[deetsay]

We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc. That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English

I consider myself lucky to be in an European country that prefers subtitles instead of dubbing, and the translators here usually tone down the language a lot. Sometimes they even do it too much, as in someone yells "Fuck!" and the subtitle shows the equivalent of "Gee gosh darn!" or something... But most of the time I think it's a good thing that they don't try to write out the swearing too much. They used to use a lot more swearing in the subtitles of old "adults only" -videos (I mean violence and horror), and that didn't always work out too well either. "Fuck" is obiviously a very global and timeless expression :-), but picking one of the traditional Finnish curses to replace something like the American favourite "God damn" often turn out a bit foot-in-mouth.

Red in "That 70's Show" always says he's going to put his foot in someone's ass, so far I think they've managed to avoid the mistake of translating that too literally. There are web-pages here devoted to those kinds of mistakes made by the translators.

Once by accident they aired an episode of "Sopranos" here, where all instances of "fucking" on the soundtrack were replaced with "friggin'". That was fucking hilarious. I don't know who gets that "censored" version normally. There are some pretty wicked violent things in that show from time to time, but someone, somewhere thought it would be a good idea to hire a bunch of actors that maybe sound a little bit like the original cast, and s/fucking/friggin'/. So, that's another instance where killing and burying gyus is OK, as long as you're not swearing while doing it...

Re:Please come forward

[Xserv]

I thought I was the only one who felt that way after reading the first line. Someone, for the love God, please mod that down...

Xserv

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Aurix]

Ooops you're right, my mistake. I did mean the V3 =)

Sure, the RAZR looks good (it's the only half decent Motorola phone I've seen in ages), but it's still miles from being as popular (and hot-selling) as most Nokia models.

People like the Nokia UI. It's simple, and it's what they're used to.

Generally, we've had nothing but problems with the Motorola's we sell and there's very little demand for them, notwithstanding some online review site that shows people's ratings of the phone. It's just not a popular phone.

Cheers.

Re:Please come forward

[PatrickThomson]

It's ok for mainland europe, you guys will get dubbing/subtitles. Here in the UK it's just raw americanisms.

Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

[deetsay]

I don't actually know anything :-), but as far as I can remember, there's been an option for "Large memory support (>4GB)" in the kernel config.

My ABSOLUTE favorite

[marco.antonio.costa]

"(Telecoms) and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!" -- SBC Communications CEO Ed Whitacre LOL! smell that fear, the desperation!

Re:My ABSOLUTE favorite

[AArmadillo]

That quote needs some context or it seems like a perfectly reasonable assertion. Ed Whitacre was saying this in the context of charging websites for the "privledge" of allowing their users to connect to said websites.

Re:My ABSOLUTE favorite

[marco.antonio.costa]

About the context then:

telco guy going absolutely flippy because now anyone with a 56k link and Google talk doesnt really need him anymore. :)

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[puto]

Wrong, the Razr was released almost a calendar year before the Nano.

I work for the cariier that had the razr first and we had them out of the door this past January.

    Motorola and Apple had another Itunes phone in the works but apple backed out and decided to hold off, felt it would cannabalize Ipod sales I imagine.

Also, there is another version of the Razr being released with itunes and an mini SD slot within the next few months. So a roker is really not necessary.

Word on the street Moto always wanted to do this, but Apple did not like, because the Razr is wholly designed by moto, but The powers that be in cupertino did not like the idea a phone where someone else got all the design kudos so Apple would not get the lions share of the credit. Uou see Apple all over the Rokr.

Puto

Re:Anyone rember this gem from days past?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." George W Bush

"But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." George W Bush

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." George W Bush

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Donald Rumsfeld

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[puto]

Well,

I work for the largest carrier in the US, and not in a "phone store" but actually some place where I am privy to see the popularity of phones on a national and international basis.

The Razr has been super popular since its release almost a year ago. In the US, Canada, and overseas.

We unlock them hand over fist for people to take to their come countries.

And since the price dropped drastically in the past few months it was one the hottest Xmas gifts given.

And while I agree with you that Moto has a good amount of crappy phones, and nokia makes a better phone, though less feature rich on the low end, the Razr is a pretty good phone all things considered, customers live it for the reception.

I have one that I use when I do not feel like toting my Treo 650(which is a good phone for the most part, a crap phone if you install third party apps) and have not had any trouble with it.

Puto

Re:tee hee giggle... sex! talkin bout his pee pee

[Anonymous Coward]

or this one... "Brownie You're doing a heck of a job."

"I'm a uniter, not a divider", "yellow cake uranium", "we will catch bin laden dead or alive", "weapons of mass destruction", "I will appoint a moderate to the supreme court", etc. Or my personal favorite, although not quite as quotable to those with low attention spans, is this new one; "To say `unchecked power' basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject...".

Grow the fuck up, you loser. I couldn't give two shits where the President sticks his dick. Even if it's a fat girl. Unless he wants to put it in one of my orifices, it's none of my business. Like the OJ trials, I was one of the very few that never watched nor cared to waste my time watching something so stupid.
Also, it was four years ago, so you might as well be talking about Carter being afraid of a bunny rabbit, Nixon being a crook, JFK cheating on his wife, or George Washington and his wooden teeth. It's ancient history. But I guess talking about someone's sex life and their genitals is going to be the defining cultural event for your entire life. Maybe all of American History!

I know we're not talking about things you can giggle over anymore, but it's because they're fucking important!

"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[mi]

[...] I'd have to wonder how Bush didn't sweep the list. Clueless baboon, out of touch with everything [...]

Just the other day we saw some postings arguing, that Bush is much like Hitler. Today -- that he is a "clueless baboon".

The two are mutually exclusive, so which is it?

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[Ender Ryan]

The two are mutually exclusive, so which is it?

You would think that, but so far, the empirical evidence suggests that is not the case. Scientists are still studying the specimen to determine how this is possible.

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[jc42]

Just the other day we saw some postings arguing, that Bush is much like Hitler. Today -- that he is a "clueless baboon". The two are mutually exclusive, so which is it?

Probably neither. A better term might be UCT (Upper Class Twit).

Much of the evidence supports the conjecture that he actually believes most of what he says. That long string of broken, bankrupt companies that he left in his wake? He probably believes that he was a good manager, and it's just bad luck that caused all the disasters. The New Orleans disaster? He probably still has no idea that his people had orchestrated the defunding of levee maintenance, that the Corps of Engineers and a massive government simulation study had predicted it all in detail; to him it was an "Act of God" that was totally unexpected. (It may have been to punish all the sinners in NO, but there's no explanation for why the French Quarter was barely touched. ;-)

Reports are that most of his associates consider him essentially a "tool", who is smart enough to parrot their ideology and PR phrases to the public, while not willing or able to bother his pretty head with the operational details. In this way, he's not very Hitleresque at all, since the evidence is that Hitler was very aware and really was orchestrating it all. Bush doesn't have the interest or patience for that; he delegates the actual work to his trusted minions.

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[pepeperes]

I would really like to know where do you find such big differences between Hitler and a clueless baboon (though he may had been a powerful one, but clueless anyway...)

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[bluekanoodle]

Actually that saying was about the fascists under Mussolini, not the Nazi's. Of course it was a given that the Nazi's kept their trains running, as they had a lot "stuff" they were moving around.

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Hey, hey, stop erecting strawmen here. All I said, is that the same person simply can not be stupid enough to deserve being called "clueless baboon" and evil enough to warrant comparisions with Hitler.

Your statement was clear enough. But my rebuttal was no straw man, and it was that you are simply incorrect, like so many people trying to protect the President and his Fascism out of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

That schizophrenics exist, destroys your argument. Bush could very well be the type that is crafty at one time, and a few hours later descends into a Hyper-Republican mindset that is the very essence of stupidity. This is why I fucking used the term "CHRONOLOGICALLY".

But we're long past "coulds". Considering Bush's past of abuse of drugs and alcohol, it's very likely he's schizo in the ways I've indicated. And -- oh yeah -- as the OP implied, we are swimming in an ocean of evidence that Bush acts like a fox on one hand, and then a retard on another.

But schizo behavior is not exclusive to the President (nor at any one time, either). Millions of Americans still think that Iraq had something to do with 911. Millions also think that Bush is a good President and that he's "protecting" America by invoking a conventional or perpetual WWIII. Schizo behavior is running rampant in America ... which is largely why you can't understand why such a critique is applied to your Republican Prophet, Bush. When society goes insane, the sane man is condemned ... and that's ALL that you are doing here, Roscoe.

In conclusion, if you want to see saliva in inappropriate places, watch tapes of your beloved Neo-Cons as they've talked up American Fascism for the last 4 years. I mean, good god, man, the use of torture is being PUBLICLY DEBATED as some sort of valid topic! 911 has been used to enact a Neo-Con (and Neo-Liberal -- let's not forget them!) agenda to enact outright Fascism in the USA. Smart guys and morons are making this all happen by cashing out America's wealth. And the Head Monkey in Charge (i.e. Bush) is all part of the larger Fascist game. To enact Fascism, you need to make more use of belly, not brain.

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[imroy]

But we're long past "coulds". Considering Bush's past of abuse of drugs and alcohol, it's very likely he's schizo in the ways I've indicated. And -- oh yeah -- as the OP implied, we are swimming in an ocean of evidence that Bush acts like a fox on one hand, and then a retard on another.

Are we so sure Bush does both? I personally see him as a kind of puppet. He is out and out an absolute moron. He has trouble constructing and completing a coherent sentence and seems to be firmly in the elitist/Republican/right-wing mindset. But he has all sorts of "advisors" and lobbyists around him, not to mention known Straussian neo-cons in his own administration like Wolferwitz and Rumsfeld. IMHO, I think they're the ones actually pushing a lot of the draconian legislation and matters of foreign policy. Not Bush. I think that's how he can appear to be both sneaky and dumb at the same time.

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[instarx]

All I said, is that the same person simply can not be stupid enough to deserve being called "clueless baboon" and evil enough to warrant comparisions with Hitler.

What makes you say that? Evilness and stupidness are not mutually exclusive. The infamous Idi Amin comes to mind. Just look at the vicious murderers in prison with IQs below 85.

If anything, I would think visiousness and lack of intelligence would be positively correlated. The unintelligent lack empathy for their victims by not having the imagination to put themselves in their victim's shoes.

A good example is Bush'e reply recently to the number of civilian killed in Iraq. "Twenny-five, thirty thousand,", he said, but in a tone completely devoid of empathy for THIRTY THOUSAND DEAD HUMAN BEINGS that made it clear he had simply memorized a number.

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[nappingcracker]

we are swimming in an ocean of evidence

Any links? Evidence? No joke or jab, I really want to know more! I have always wondered how he works as POTUS; I am no fan, but I would like to believe that one can not be a complete moppet and become Commander in Chief. Show me "Fox in office for 6 billion lives, Alex".

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[mi]

Evilness and stupidness are not mutually exclusive. The infamous Idi Amin comes to mind. Just look at the vicious murderers in prison with IQs below 85.

Yes, a human being (and a baboon) may be evil and stupid at the same time. But the evilness of Hitler's scale is mutually exclusive with the stupidity, that warrants comparisions with a monkey.

Until you are ready to accuse Bush of plotting to intentionally kill a few million civilians, you should leave Hitler alone.

See Tim Skirvin's excellent commentary.

A good example is Bush'e reply recently to the number of civilian killed in Iraq.

Heh, do you think, Roosevelt knew exactly how many Japanese died in any of the American attacks? Does that make him in any way similar to Hitler? Or to Bush, for that matter?

Re:"Baboon" or "Hitler"? I'm confused...

[instarx]

But the evilness of Hitler's scale is mutually exclusive with the stupidity, that warrants comparisions with a monkey.

I'm not quite sure that sentence makes sense, but I think I get your point. I did not bring up Hitler, you did. Your point was very clear: One cannot be both stupid and evil at the same time (as in Hitler) so people who dislike Bush for both exhibit a logical inconsistency. I hope you have a better argument than that for Bush being a competent president. It is pretty clear that Bush is dumb as a post AND has no empathy for the 30,000 innocent civilians in his war for oil. I personally think killing 30,000 people for more money for you and your "oil binness" buddies is pretty damned evil.

Heh, do you think, Roosevelt knew exactly how many Japanese died in any of the American attacks? Does that make him in any way similar to Hitler? Or to Bush, for that matter?

It isn't the knowing, it is the utter disregard for the humanity of those that suffer that is the issue. Also, Roosevelt did not gain financially from WWII in the way that the Bushes and the Carlisle Group have done. Another BIG difference between Roosevelt and Bush is that in WWII we were attacked while the Iraq war is a competely optional war based on trumped up PR to further the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld neo-con doctrine...and of course for the money. Bush clearly wanted Iraq oil and he pathetically thought it would be easy to get just by invading. That was stupid beyond words.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[JonathanBoyd]

Wrong, the Razr was released almost a calendar year before the Nano.

But he was talking about the ROKR, not the RAZR.

Re:tee hee giggle... sex! talkin bout his pee pee

[pembo13]

Some just don't get it. USA, where sex with one person is more important than war with another country.

Re:Anyone rember this gem from days past?

[Vo0k]

I bet he had enough materials at least to produce 500 tons of mustard. And another 800 tons of mayonaise.

Save it - it'll come in handy

[Handpaper]

Where I live and work (Wales, UK and a warehouse in same) I'm in daily contact with people who don't seem to be able to get to the end of a sentence without saying 'fuck' at least once.

"So I went to the fuckin' shop for some fuckin' fags[1], an' I saw they 'ad the latest fuckin' [car|bike|console gaming] magazine, so I fuckin' 'ad that..." is a fairly typical example. These people seem to become completely lost, however, when something worthy of a decent curse happens. They've used up their vocabulary and are reduced to standing open-mouthed and helpless (or screaming, in the case of accidental self-injury).

Far better to save the (formerly) impressive curses for suitably momentous events, thus preserving your linguistic headroom.

[1]Cigarettes. With apologies to bash.org, it is illegal to traffic in homosexuals in the UK.

Re:Save it - it'll come in handy

[Ztream]

I agree. It's kind of like exclamation marks and such -- people who WRITE LIKE THIS!!! can never write anything "forcefully" because it just looks like their normal braindead way of communicating. Don't get me started on people who always use the "priority" flag on e-mail...

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[aaribaud]

I fail to see how the ROKR is like the RAZR, but with iTunes compatibility, seeing as they don't have the same form factor at all to boot.

Re:Please come forward

[VStrider]

I agree. "Proper use of english: Episode 12", will clarify everything about the subject.

What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

...this one?

Not tech but the top spoken gaffe of 2005

[nightsweat]

Without a DOUBT was, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Re:Not tech but the top spoken gaffe of 2005

[ACMENEWSLLC]

That was probably the most honest of them. He was doing a he-ll of a job...those places were turned into hell, right? ;)

Re:Not tech but the top spoken gaffe of 2005

[Damvan]

Or how about "No one expected the levees to fail" said 4 days after the Hurricane.

Re:Not tech but the top spoken gaffe of 2005

[chicagotypewriter]

the hurricane brought back led zepplin's "when the levee breaks" into my music rotation. that was a good time

Re:-5, Redundant

[BushCheney08]

...but I have picked up an awful lot of information (or some combination of those words, at least) from comments over the years.

Yup. Agreed. I've definitely picked up a lot of awful information from the comments over the years, too. : p

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[nxtw]

The operating system of the two phones is fairly similar. Beyond the ROKR's iTunes and memory card functionality, and the form factor, the phones are more or less the same.

My favorite

[generic-man]

My favorite gaffe of 2005 had to be the non-story about Google and Sun "teaming up on OpenOffice." Remember how Slashdot reported that Sun and Google were "planning Web Office" and how hundreds of posts celebrated the "fact" that a buggy office suite would be rewritten in JavaScript? In the end all that came of that deal is that Google would bundle its toolbar with the wholly-unrelated JRE download -- an asinine bundling that if it involved any other two companies (cough) would have led to mass denouncement among the alpha geeks.

Re:My favorite

[generic-man]

Yes.

Re:My favorite

[Sj0]

You're just a troll.

The story you've linked to is about Yahoo actively supporting adware companies.

Title of the article: "Is Yahoo Actively Supporting Adware?"

Almost every major company with something to hawk tries to bundle their thing with something unrelated. You don't hear people lambasting MS for bundling their MSN toolbar and MSN search into the MSN Messenger package. You don't hear people complaining that Yahoo bundles their own toolbar with some software. Hell, I'm certain that AIM tries to unload something on it's users too.

The double standard you're complaining about exists only in your mind.

Re:My favorite

[generic-man]

You're missing the point.

Slashdot posted an article and another article intimating that Google and Sun were going to release "an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser." Instead of actual facts these articles based on speculation percolated through blogs and vacant beliefs that Google was going to wholly displace Microsoft as a benevolent technology dictator.

What happened was that Sun asked to install the Google Toolbar as part of installing the JRE -- at best a minor convenience, at worst a minor nuisance. This was by a large margin the largest non-story I've seen on Slashdot this year.

You're right that I had underestimated Slashdot's collective wisdom about the situation. The 5-rated posts from one of the aforementioned articles skew towards skepticism about the utility of a thin client office suite.

Re:My favorite

[Sj0]

And with a five digit slashdot uid this suprises you?

It's what slashdot does! If people actually formed informed opinions before opening their mouths, this place would only get 1/1000th of the traffic! :P

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[shawb]

Here in the States, the cellphone is a fashion statement, not a communications device. How it looks matters more than how well it functions or how easy it is to use. Smaller and thinner is what fasion strives for. The RAZR has pretty good sales in the United States. But yeah, I love my Nokia. Anybody who tries to use it is like "Wow, the layout actually makes sense. WTF?" The phone is small enough to carry around, but built sturdy enough to take the general abuse that being in a person's pockets all day will give. Now I just need to find a carrier that has recpetion in my house.

Very good point

[dptalia]

We should put the media up for an award for their Katrina coverage. The Cat 4 huricane that was really a cat 3, the higher percentage of white people (over general population) who died versus black, the lack of mass murders in the shelters.... I could go on and on.

Re:Very good point

[gameguy1957]

Thanks you! I live on the Gulf Coast and every time there is a storm that get close, the news agencies send hundreds of reporters to the area. Not only do they get in the way but they wish bad things on us in order to get a good report. If the storm happens to go in a different direction or degrade, you can watch as the reporters get dissappointed because there's not going to be as much destruction. Not only that but their exaggerated stories cause runs on fuel, food and building materials before the storm. I've noticed that the past several storms have not appeared to be as bad as they were reported on the news. Thanks again for bringing up this point. -JM

Re:Very good point

[dptalia]

How about the the TV report about flooding from the reporter in the kyak? If I remember correctly she was in about 2 inches of water... Non disasters don't get viewers, so everything has to be hyped up for the coverage.

Re:Very good point

[Vitriol Angst]

How about the award for the Media for about the past decade?

They didn't start to give crappy, over-hyped reports on Katrina -- they actually somewhat improved reporting for a brief moment. But News Reporters follow "stories" not truth, not justice, not anything but what makes the best "story."

And don't feel left out that they didn't report White Misery -- yes, In know there are other place besides New Orleans -- but you are talking about a media that spent about 3 months in Aruba chasing down one white girl. If you had wanted coverage, you would have had to run around in large, naked groups with funny hats. Just getting killed doesn't count.

So, insipid, useless infotainment driven by PR flacks is the norm in News today. Screaming about the travails of a minority occasionally does nothing to upset the status quo.

And it is pretty obvious to me that the Weathermen over hype any bad weather. That's why it's so hard for people to decide whether to evacuate or not -- because any Hurricane will admonishments about the last group who didn't heed the weathermen. Nothing makes a weather persons day than to interrupt regularly scheduled programming with a weather alert. The only News here is that the News Service has been dead for some time.

Re:Very good point

[king-manic]

Thanks you! I live on the Gulf Coast and every time there is a storm that get close, the news agencies send hundreds of reporters to the area. Not only do they get in the way but they wish bad things on us in order to get a good report. If the storm happens to go in a different direction or degrade, you can watch as the reporters get dissappointed because there's not going to be as much destruction. Not only that but their exaggerated stories cause runs on fuel, food and building materials before the storm. I've noticed that the past several storms have not appeared to be as bad as they were reported on the news. Thanks again for bringing up this point. -JM

The general rule of thumb is to assume all the things you see on TV and read in the newspaper is second hand bullshit put out by the most shallo and oppotunistic shells of humanity that every lived. Of all of the news stories in the local media that I have ever been a part off, not one was even close to the truth. Friends who were university students were reported as gand members, actuall criminal associates being described as harmless bystandards, Quotes from my union being taken out of context or simply mis quoted ect.. Objective jounalism is a myth and has never occured in the history of man. The basics of the stories are there btu you must realize it's mostly spin.

Re:Very good point

[Sj0]

News stopped being news the second it was shown to be more profitable to sell entertainment in a different package.

Re:Very good point

[HiThere]

Speaking from the San Francisco Bay Area... & Yes, the earthquakes and fires were devastating. Large numbers of people ended up with their homes in ruins, and many didn't have sufficient (or any) insurance...or the companies were reluctant to pay...

But it didn't look in person like it did on TV. San Francisco didn't end up in ruins, though a few blocks were demolished by the earthquake. Actually the fire the next year was much more destructive (though it killed fewer people). I was out of the area when it happened, and saw it first on TV. When I came back...yes, there were multiple square miles without a house standing...but MOST of the city (Oakland + Berkeley) was untouched. Not at all what one would have concluded from the news.

Going back a few years, I remember student protests, before the media were controlled into not covering political protests. The coverage never matched what was happening. Sometimes it inflated it, sometimes it trivialized it, but it was never honest.

When you read a news story, always ask yourself "Who benefits?". Just accept that it almost certainly has no clear relation to what really happened. It's a work of fiction of the sub-genre "news" in the genre called "Propaganda". If you don't believe this, find a story that you can check on, and check it out. You'll see. News usually bears a relationship to the truth. They don't usually lie directly. They do, however, achieve the same effect by selection, focus, and the use of slanted descriptions.

Re:Very good point

[StikyPad]

The only News here is that the News Service has been dead for some time.

Wouldn't that not be news? Olds, maybe..

Re:Please come forward

[zerocool^]

I was going to point out that on that 70's show, I think Red says "put my foot up your ass" or something using "up", and not "in". I don't watch the show often, but I think that's right. Anyway, in America, there's a subtle distinction between them - "up" implies an upward motion of the foot towards the ass, while "in" sounds disturbed - as if he were to stiffen up his toes and aim for squiggling them into the anus.

I'd imagine there are all sorts of subtle distinctions like this. I watch Iron Chef, and I rather like the dubbing job they do, in which they take many liberties "Fukui-san? Go ahead, big fella" is probably not word-for-word translated from Japanese, but it puts Americans at ease, rather than "Fukui-san, I beg your attention. Yes. Ohta, inform us". I've noticed that even then, they almost always translate "hai" as "yes", when it's really more of just an acknowledgement, as in, it's polite to say "hai" after someone asks you a question to show your understanding and acknowledgement. It also means yes, though.

~Will

Re:Please come forward

[oudzeeman]

I'm a mid-20s, educated (masters degree), upper middle class American, and when I'm with my buddies about every other word is "fuck". Especially when we are drinking or playing poker. However, I am usually quite civilized when I'm in public

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[aaribaud]

Precisely: the operating systems are fairly similar whatever the phone. So What "makes" the RAZR is not its operating system, it's its form factor. And what "makes" the ROKR is not its operating system, it's its iTunes functonality, Apart from that slight detail, they're quite identical, if by that one means that theyr both are phones.

A personal favorite

[SnappingTurtle]

I once worked at a small factory that was going through some difficult financial times. The CEO was really a decent guy, but he made a classic gaffe during a speech. He was trying to show the factory workers that he was willing to sacrifice too, so he said "if it helps the company, I'm willing to take home a few thousand less a month."

His "I'm there with you" speech to workers who were lucky to take a single thousand a month didn't exactly have the intended affect, and he resigned a month later.

Re:A personal favorite

[poot_rootbeer]

He was true to his word, though, wasn't he? By resigning, he ended up taking home several thousand less per month, AND he helped the company by getting rid of a demonstrated morale killer.

Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.

One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.

Everyone one of those is from Bill Clinton.

We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Those are from Al Gore.

[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.

The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.

(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.

That's from John Kerry.

So put a fucking sock in the "Bush lied" crap.

Re:Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[Floody]

(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.

That's from John Kerry.

So put a fucking sock in the "Bush lied" crap.

Ok, so maybe Bush did believe there were WMDs. I don't think I've heard anyone saying Saddam was a nice guy or anything, it's pretty much agreed in all parts of the civilized world, no matter what your political leanings, he was a grade A asshole (yes, I know the US pandered to him in the 80s, and yes that was a shitty thing to do).

Given that, it's certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of reason to consider security data which implicated Saddam in such activities. But... you don't go to war without a vetting your intelligence.

So, if that's the case, that means Bush is either a completely gullible buffoon and utterly failed to do minimal source-vetting, or he was maliciously manipulated and lied to by those underneath him (or they didn't perform due diligence). Either way, where's some of this "personal accountability" we hear so much about from the right? (hey, and I'm all for it really, if it's real)

Let's put it this way: If I were president, which I never ever want to be, and shit played out such that I discovered I had been lied-to/duped/etc like that ... heads would fucking roll. Bye-bye National Security Advisor, bye-bye Sec. of Defense. The point is: either Bush lied, or those he appointed lied via/to him or were woefully negligent, yet they're all still sitting pretty. Either way, that means something is very very wrong.

Re:Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[Damvan]

How about some dates with those quotes? They lose some of their "impact" when we find they are from 1985 or something. Either way, Kerry or Gore did not have the ability or power to verify the WMD lies. Kerry was only a Senator, Gore a private citizen. BUSH was the fucking president! He had every power, obligation, and responsibility to verify those claims were correct, which he obviously didn't. He ignored any information to the contrary of his beliefs and denounced those who said it.

Re:Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[Floody]

you don't go to war without a vetting your intelligence.

It was vetted. By everyone. Everyone on the damn planet thought Saddam had WMDs. Here's what the BBC had to say about Saddam's nuclear weapons program.

I'm not sure you understand what "vetted" means in the context of sensitive security intel. You think that the BBC has access to NSA, CIA or MI5 sources? If they do, they probably shouldn't and the leak should be plugged, that's the whole point of security intelligence. Bush and Blair, rightly or wrongly, stood before us and announced that a clear and present danger existed; that intelligence unanimously indicated Saddam had WMDs of some fashion. When the leader of a country makes such a proclamation, private citizens and corporations usually have absolutely no way to prove or disprove it. So don't tell me that it was vetted, the process those reporting the information to Bush/Blair would have used for vetting is intentionally (and properly, imo) not public..

The point remains: If, in good faith, one has reason to believe a security situation exists which is so severe as to require all out invasion, one must triple/quadruple-check that intel against multiple sources and apply reliability weight factors to all of them -- while simultaneously having a differenct non-confluent intel organization independently perform the same. Anything less than this is gross misconduct for a high-ranking intelligence officer or cabinet member. If by some god-awful chance you or those below you have completely and totally fumbled; you resign. Period. (and take those subordinates who may have screwed up with you). We're talking about stuff that is so critical, so important, that you are not allowed to make mistakes. To err is human, but there are aspects of some jobs where even occasional human error is not tolerable.

How much historical revisionism is getting pulled out of anal sphincters everywhere just to attack Bush anyway?

Wow. Talk about revisionism. This isn't ancient history; we saw this happen live. There were only three people (and their staffs) proclaiming that, without a doubt, Saddam had WMD: Bush, Blair and Cheney. Hell, Blix made his report to the UN just days after Cheney declared complete and total certainty of US/UK intel, and in that report he stated, as had never done previously that Iraq was considerably more cooperative than they *ever* had been in the past. I know Blix was "had" before, in 1991, by the Baathists, but it would appear that Saddam wasn't confident he could pull the wool over his eyes again. Certainly, Saddam wanted to remain WMD-capable for some future point (like I said, no disputing he is a total fucknut), but we now know that he was much more worried about the toll economic sanctions were having as well as the pontential for US invasion.

There can be no mistake, this was a catastrophic intelligence failure (or we are being completely lied to -- but I prefer to give one who holds the office of Commander and Chief the benefit of the doubt, out of respect for tradition and the responsibility it represents), yet here we are in an extended ground conflict w/ over 2000 US troop deaths to date, and all we get is spin.

I reiterate: Something is very very wrong.

Re:Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[onemorechip]

Everyone on the damn planet thought Saddam had WMDs.

Everyone except Colin Powell, you mean?

Re:Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[cebarro]

Ok..... can I stay on the Bush is a Fucktard bandwagon though?

Re:Anyone rember *these* Dem gems from days past?

[Rhinobird]

BUSH was the fucking president! He had every power, obligation, and responsibility to verify those claims were correct, which he obviously didn't
So, what was president Clinton's excuse? I see you didn't mention him.

Saying Kerry is only a Senator is like saying Bill Gates has only a little money. And Gore is a private citizen, after his career in the Sentate, and 8 years as Vice President. They had access to the same information as Bush, and being in Washington for all those years, they even had it BEFORE Bush was President. So, what's their excuse?

Seriously this whole "Bush lied" thing has got to go away. There's so much more to blame him for, that getting your panties in a knot over a non-lie is a little awkward.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[numbski]

Two points:

Motorola E680i
Motorola A780

Next please?

My Bad...

[argo747]

I'm not sure how the list could skip over the antics of Overstock.com president Patrick "My Bad" Byrne. I hope that someday I can start a company where I can claim bad news is the result of a conspiracy lead by a Sith Lord. Like him or not Patrick is entertaining. The company's recent customer service problem can also make for entertaining (if not unnerving) reading.

Re:My Bad...

[The_Sock]

I had no idea they were that bad, until I ordered from them. I ordered on Nov. 29th 2005. The estimated arrival date is now Dec. 29th. This is one company I don't mind seeing going bankrupt. I hope to go to a shareholders meeting so I can piss on the CEO. If I see that guy in the street, he's getting a cock punch. These guys are absolute horse shit. In response to my question on what was taking so long, they let me know that it shipped on the 19th of December.. Well thank you very much, fuckie. That would be nice if I ordered it on say, the 18th of December, or even the 17th of December, but I ordered it on the 28th of November. And for the price I paid for shipping, I expect it here quick. It used to be that when you pissed off enough people, they would all get together with hoods and torches and just burn your shit down. If this was still the case, I can guarentee that shit would have been shipped the 30th of November. Fuck OverStock, fuck them in their stupid asses. I only hope I can return the merchandise for a full refund, because no matter how cheap, I just cannot justify giving money to a company so obviously run by primates.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Draveed]

I guess that must be an Australian thing because here in the US everyone and their mother wants a Razr. Motorola in general, not just the Razr, is popular. I would guess that's because most Americans want clamshell phones and that's pretty much all of Moto's product line. That might change now that Nokia is starting to produce clamshells though.

I've only used a Motorola phone once (the A630) and I would actually get pissed off at the UI. I dropped that phone in a few months when I couldn't stand it anymore and switched to a Nokia 6230. It's just so natural to use. I really don't get why they aren't more popular here.

Re:My Fav

[TheSpoom]

What mod decided a random cut and paste of the article text is "informative"? There's no actual comment here!

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[nxtw]

The operating systems may be similar in that most phones let you dial numbers and hit send to make a call and then end to hang up the call. But just about every phone manufacturer has its own OS, with its own feature set, phone book, ringtone settings, etc.

For those of us that pay more attention to the phone's functionality instead of looks/form factor, the ROKR and RAZR will be very similar, whereas the RAZR compared to a Sony Ericsson would be rather different.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[nwbvt]

The same could easily be said of "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?". While it may piss off Wired magazine, most people out there do not know what a rootkit is and do not care about it (note, the /. readership is not a good sample of 'most people').

I actually don't see any real 'foot in mouth' comments. Most were intended to be jokes so the humor involved in them should be expected. A few were attempts to cover up the truth, such as with the Hwang Woo-suk comment. No foot in mouth there, he said exactly what he intended to say. Thats like claiming a convicted murder made a foot in mouth comment when he pled 'not guilty'. The biggest 'foot in mouth' comment I see here is in the article's title. Good job Wired, nothing but quality reporting from you these days.

Re:Anyone rember this gem from days past?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this one "There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq".

2 standards

[kidtwist]

They didn't include the "2 standards are better than 1" comment from the Microsoft guy in the Massachusetts case. That was my my favorite.

Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

[DeadMeat (TM)]

Newer x86 chips (i.e., anything you'd want to combine with 2GB+ of RAM) have a mode which supports up to 64GB of RAM. Linux and Windows both support this mode.

However, you're still limited to 4GB of addressable memory per process. If you need more than that, you have to go 64-bit.

Apple III

[sycodon]

I probably could dig up the manual to my first Apple III, which stated in print, that 128K was more than anyone would ever need or something approximate to that.

We read this as we were trying to figure out why the System Utility software was crashing with a stack overflow...it was because it required 256K to run.

Re:Please come forward

[cybrthng]

Funny.. your response is nothing but showing how ignorant you are.

Did you respond to his post? Did you deny or refute any of his comments? Did you question or think about what he was saying or trying to say? No, you changed the topic by being immature, disrespectful and very childish. They very American he was talking about that can't find his own head from his ass.

way to blow it.

Re:Anyone rember this gem from days past?

[SnarfQuest]

Clinton sure said stupid things, didn't he.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[ttrafford]

The same could easily be said of "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?". While it may piss off Wired magazine, most people out there do not know what a rootkit is and do not care about it (note, the /. readership is not a good sample of 'most people').

Most people don't even know what staph is, so why should they care if our doctors wash their hands?

2006?

[ff1324]

I'd be more interested in an article detailing the Foot-In-Mouth awards from 2006. As well as a few football scores from next season.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[nwbvt]

They know plenty about germs in general, so I'm sure they would care about that. They likely will not care about some new staph treatment or something else specific to that specific bacteria.

Aaron Broussard

[SirBruce]

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, in his emotional Hurrican Katrina tirade on NBC's Meet the Press:

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, `Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, `And yeah, Momma, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday' - and she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night," Broussard said.

"Nobody's coming to get her, nobody's coming to get her. The secretary's promise, everybody's promise. They've had press conferences - I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."

Of course, it turned out the above story was a complete lie.

Bruce

Re:Aaron Broussard

[Sj0]

To be fair, this WAS the biggest piece of news to come out of New Orleans in several years that didn't involve girls going wild. :P

Re:Aaron Broussard

[SirBruce]

The story Aaron Broussard gave was the lie. The whole point is he put his foot in his mouth.

Bruce

hey!

[l4m3z0r]

as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show

Let's be nice, some of us like Steven Tyler...

Re:Please come forward

[deetsay]

I was going to point out that on that 70's show, I think Red says "put my foot up your ass" or something using "up", and not "in". I don't watch the show often, but I think that's right. Anyway, in America, there's a subtle distinction between them - "up" implies an upward motion of the foot towards the ass, while "in" sounds disturbed - as if he were to stiffen up his toes and aim for squiggling them into the anus.

Either way, the literal meaning includes insertion, right? As a matter of fact, I always figured that was exactly the concept of thought that Red was going for -- except maybe that he doesn't mean to insert his foot toes-first and squiggling, but violently sideways, or whatever way his boot happens to hit.

But fortunately the first thing his expression brings to mind is the figurative meaning, that he's going to beat you up, and that's the way it's usually translated too. It would be too hard to come up with a translation that involves a foot, ass, and an expression that's like insertion, but signifying more of a threat of violence rather than something pervertedly sexual.

I bet the reproductive organs and ass are hard for translators, because there's always millions of words to pick from, and they all have different ratios of scientificness and offensiveness and cuteness and obscurityness and contemporaryness and everything.

Re:-5, Redundant

[sglewis100]

Honestly - why should it matter if another web site posts a story first? If something happens and a 24 hour cable news network covers it at 4pm, should the nightly news NOT talk about it, since it's been covered already? That's absurd!!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Please come forward

[silverbax]

I'm not offended by 'fuck', but I'm sure there are things that will offend me that I'm glad nobody prints. But I could just follow your lead and claim to be mentally superior and more tolerant and understanding simply because I know a euphemism for sex and have no inhibitions about spouting it.

Maybe I could make a blanket statement about a whole country based on the fact that I think I'm so deep simply because I can liberally use the word 'fuck' without remorse.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[ttrafford]

But the point here is it's the terminology people are unfamiliar with, not the concept. I may not recognize the police code for breaking and entering, but that doesn't mean I don't care if it is happening at my house.

Re:C'mon! Intelligence? On the Interweb? Ha!

[networkBoy]

What we need is glass parking lots I tell ya.
Lots of them.
Especially in Dubai, afterall they need space for the cars carrying the people to fill those tall buildings.

(sorry, couldn't resist the bait).
-nB

Re:Please come forward

[EnsilZah]

What i find annoying is that words like fuck have some sort of magical value attached to them.
I mean, when you watch TV and someone says "You *beep*ing mother *beep*er", or when someone writes "f**k", you know exactly what it means, so it's not the meaning the censors find offensive but the arrangement of letters or sounds.

I think the US just has irrational taboos created by religion for no particular reason other than maybe control.
Would you really be scarred for life if you see some breats at age 6, or turn into a dangerous criminal if you hear someone say 'shit' once in a while?

Re:Please come forward

[xx01dk]

I'd mod you up one. I'm American and not offended, and I don't get us either.

Re:-5, Redundant

[PunkOfLinux]

or there's always the happy medium of going to slashdot, finding an interesting article and reading the comments, while looking at digg in another tab on Firefox. I RARELY read the comments on digg. I will usually read at least the first page of comments here on slashdot. Really, there is such a thing as the middle road.

Re:Please come forward

[BillyBlaze]

Not using words like fuck, breast, or parsexml is sometimes necessary to avoid being blocked by filtering software. Grrr.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[nwbvt]

Which is something that critics of Sony should keep in mind when they publically complain over their use of this technology. You can't just throw out terminology that most people out there are not at all familiar with and expect them to instantly get it. And since those critics fail to recognize that, Sony's reputation is safe from the general public. I believe that is the point that he was trying to make in that quote.

Re:its a question of degrees

[Damek]

Wait - let me go look up "sin" - mortal or otherwise - in the US Constitution...

I'll come back when I find it.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Sj0]

Frankly, I just don't see it. In a sample group of about 10 people, all had MP3 players, and 0 had any apple MP3 player.

With all this talk of how well the iPod and derivatives are doing, it's awkward that I've only ever seen one in my life, and it was two years ago, owned by a die-hard Mac user.

I smell hype.

Re:Please come forward

[Bralkein]

According to my dad, there is an interesting explanation behind the difference in rudeness between two English words that mean the same thing. In 1066 the Normans invaded England and took it over. This meant that there were two populations coexisting. There were the Anglo-Saxons, who were the common folk, and you had also the Normans who were the gentry.

These two people spoke different languages. Most of the ruder terms have come from the Anglo-Saxon words, while most of the more acceptable words come from the Norman words. The reason why the Norman words are less rude is, of course, because they were more upper-class and so using the words of the Normans was less vulgar.

I don't know if this is true, but if it is, then it's certainly interesting how class differences from a thousand years ago can still affect the language we speak today! If you look up "crap" in the dictionary, then it tells you that it comes from Old French roots (the Normans came from France), whereas "shit" is apparently from Old English, which seems to lend credence to this theory.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[lowid (24) _________]

You've really only ever seen one mp3 player in your life? A lot of this might have to do with your age (I don't know it, but I'm guessing it isn't anywhere between 16-24). I'm in college, and last january after returning from break just about every other person you passed had the telltale white headphones popping out. For people around my age, if you want an mp3 player you get an ipod. I only know one other person who has a non-ipod mp3 player, but he's also a linux junkie, which sort of explains that.

I'm not going to call bullshit on you, but it's not like the ipod is a made-up phenomenon. Quickly googled numbers , in fact, suggest 90% of the mp3 player market (pretty far off from the 0% you suggested). Not really a minority. There is certainly hype surrounding the ipod machine, but that doesn't mean there are hard numbers as well.

P.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[lowid (24) _________]

Sorry, replace "you've never seen an mp3 player" with "you've never seen an ipod" in my above comment. Proofreading.

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Sj0]

I'm 21, and in my second year of college. People just don't have these things.

Right off the top of my head, I've got some chinese monstrosity(Company doesn't even have a website), my father has an RCA Lyra, my roommate has a Sony network walkman, Two of my brothers have Lyras, and the few classmates whose mp3 players I've seen tend to have Sonys.

I wouldn't call the market penetration of the iPods that significant where I am. Maybe this phenomena is a Winnipeg/Northwestern Ontario thing.

Re:Please come forward

[vortigern00]

I hate that, as a parent, I am perpetuating the problem.

I have always believed that the concept of a "curse word" or a word you should not say is completely daft. So I resolved that I would not teach my children that certain words were bad.

However, that was before I had kids.

Now, I'm afraid, that I am teaching them not to say certain words, and punishing them if they do. Why? Mostly because I don't want to put up with phone calls from the babysitter about so-and-so's potty mouth.

When did this change happen? My eldest son came home one day and said "Papa, can I say holy shit?" ".......why do you ask?" "Well because Ms. Debbie told me I can't say holy shit"

Of course at that point I knew this particular boy pretty well, and I knew that he had a habit of repeating any new word he learned over and over at the top of his lungs. I could just imagine him running around screaming "holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshith olyshit!!!!!" at Debbie's. If he were only to do that at my house it would be no big deal. I'd just tell him to knock it off like I do when he runs around saying "snausages!!!!" or whatever.

So I told him to say "Holy Cow" instead. He didn't like that and instead decided to use "Holy Pig", which I got to hear endlessly for weeks.

I am fairly disappointed in myself for not being able to reconcile my beliefs with those of ignorant society at large, but it is what it is, I suppose.

Re:Please come forward

[c0reboarder]

How could you get "us"? You're talking about human beings! Each one is different from the next. There is no way you can generalize any large group of people and be accurate (well except the French, cowards). Didn't you pay attention in 2nd grade?

Re:Please come forward

[theonetruekeebler]

That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English

It's true. It's really fucking true.

We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc.

One of the worst stereotypes to deal with is that American women are sexually promiscuous. This is probably because most of the world's pornography comes from the U.S.

My wife is an accomplished traveler with an amazing knack for language and dialect. When abroad, people assume she's far too sophisticated to be an American. Very often, though, as soon as men learn where she's from, they stop treating her with respect and start hitting on her. Once a man let out a whoop and grabbed at her breasts. She slapped him, he called her a puta and ran out the door. To be fair, the man was a tourist, and horrified locals went to great ends to make her feel safe and welcome again.

Back to the f-word: its use varies between cultural groups and social classes---and America has lots of those. Men swear more than women. The poor swear more than the rich. The agnostic swear more than the religious. Dock workers swear more than funeral directors. The young swear more than the old---but when the old do swear, they do it very, very well. I can remember when some teenager mouthed off to my grandfather, a World War II combat veteran. Called him a Nazi. Grandpa spent five minutes swearing at this boy without pausing or repeating himself. Little fucker was crying when it was over.

Both

[phorm]

Acts like Hitler with his absolutism and vyings for complete control... thinks like a baboon with his lack of understanding and unintelligent arguements/commentary.

Re:Please come forward

[Strolls]

To me, [fuck is] just a word. Like 'blimey'. Nobody screams bloody murder when you say 'blimey', and yet it's used in the same way.

Oh, I'll have to remember that when I get a girlfriend: "I'm really horny... fancy a blimey, babe?"

Stroller.

Bullshit.

[porkchop_d_clown]

The interesting thing was not that the FBI "visited a student" but that they COULD visit a student.

Yeah, they could. Assuming, of course, the student was being investigated for terrorism or other national security offenses.

The idea that random students will be monitored for their reading habits is purest fear mongering.

Re:Bullshit.

[Vitriol Angst]

Well, If everyone OBEYED the secrecy laws provided for by the Patriot Act -- I'm sure that such an accusation would be speculation.

The only people who have anything to fear are those who are terrorists? Somehow, our government is secretly competent -- while they brilliantly throw off the enemy by being totally incompetent in public. To take the handling of Katrina and the bungling of the rebuilding of Iraq and then assume that our glorious leaders are going to get it right when they aren't in the public eye is perhaps the greatest of faith-based tin foil hat theories.

Here's an article, and it links to a 400 page NSA document where, the students aren't random -- but anti war. You know, Peace mongers -- real threats like Quakers; http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20051218/cm_huffp ost/012499

Domestic spying. People can be secretly arrested and never charged. The government has all the ability to disappear anyone they don't like and call them a terrorist and they never have to see a court. It doesn't matter that you can reassure us that it HASN"T happened yet. You don't know that anymore than I do. All power is supposed to be in the hands of the people, when not explicitly allowed to the government. You don't allow the government the "ability to torture" and then they promise that they won't. What sort of logic is that?

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[lowid (24) _________]

Perhaps. I go to school in miami, where people tend to be a bit trendier. Both in my hometown, nashville, and miami the ipods are certainly prevalent, though. Probably more of a big city thing.

Shooting (stupid) fish in a barrel

[Anonymous Coward]

There were only three people (and their staffs) proclaiming that, without a doubt, Saddam had WMD

What a lie. What a downright despicable, arrogant, so-WRONG-it-couldn't-be-wronger-if-it-claimed-2-pl us-2-equals-five fucking lie. And you have either the balls or the stupidity to say Bush lied? What damned planet have you been on, anyway? What color is the sky? It sure as shit can't be blue. What kind of mind-blowing drugs do they have? You've been partaking of them too much.

Like I said. Revisionism. Right out of some idiot's asshole. Instead of pulling that crap out of your ass, you need to pull your completely useless HEAD out first.

Page one of documented quotes proving you are one totally brainless, utter waste of protoplasm.

Page two of documented quotes that demonstrate beyond any doubt that you have less intelligence than a loose, runny beer shit.

Page fucking THREE of even *more* documented quotes that put to bed for all eternity the question of whether you have any functionality left in the utter vacuum between your ears.

Something is wrong all fucking right. Your claim to be sentient is farcical. Calling you a dumbshit would be an insult to all the dung beetles in the world. Hell, it would be an insult to all the DEAD dung beetles in the world.

Al Gore > September 23, 2002
"We know that he has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow i

Re:Shooting (stupid) fish in a barrel

[Floody]

There were only three people (and their staffs) proclaiming that, without a doubt, Saddam had WMD

What a lie. What a downright despicable, arrogant, so-WRONG-it-couldn't-be-wronger-if-it-claimed-2-pl us-2-equals-five fucking lie. And you have either the balls or the stupidity to say Bush lied? What damned planet have you been on, anyway?

Ad hominem. And partially misrepresentative of my actual post, specifically:

"There can be no mistake, this was a catastrophic intelligence failure (or we are being completely lied to -- but I prefer to give one who holds the office of Commander and Chief the benefit of the doubt, out of respect for tradition and the responsibility it represents
(emphasis added)

In the context of what I actually wrote, care to explain how this could be interpreted as an accusal of presidential deceit?

In response to your litany of quotes: Most of them predate both commencement of hostilities and public statements made by the Bush administration by at leat four years. It is disingenuous to suggest that such statments are linked to the administration's decision to invade or any recent specific intelligence that lead to the invasion.The remainder of relevant quotes are all either misrepresented out of context, or do not actually specifically make bold statements along the lines of without a doubt. In the future, you are encouraged to more carefully select quotes based on their actual relevence to the discussion at hand.

A number of these quotes are excellent examples which speak to my original point; specifically those that are likely unrelated to any intelligence offered to Senators (and thus responsible for their respective viewpoints):

"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs."
-- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

Notice how this doesn't even begin to resemble a "without a doubt" statement? One wonders what argugment exactly you were offering this in support of.

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
-- Bob Graham, December 2002

Again, absolutely not a statement of complete and total assuredness. Note that key phrase "compelling evidence." This indicates that a partcular situation is likely true, but not known to be an absolutely certainty.

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
-- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

Oddly enough, the phrase "seeking and developing" does not actually mean the same thing as a "sure thing." Sorry.

Better a foot in the mouth than a feces...

[BYTEBuG]

This banter reminds me of some dumb Congressman who spoke at an anti-abortion rally a number of years ago and tearfully declared over and over again, "I was a feces once! We were all feces!" I'm sure he felt like one after he was told of his gaffe.

I happen to know that I am not, nor have I ever been, a feces. And, unless I'm consumed by cannibals, I never will be!

Re:Better a foot in the mouth than a feces...

[StikyPad]

Cannibals? Don't forget about us..

-Bears

Re:foot in mouth? or the truth?

[Sj0]

Winnpeg is comperable in size to Nashville. :P

I'd sooner guess that the difference is due to a larger abundance of inexpensive players from other manufacturers, and a possible premium on the price of iPods. I got my 256MB player for about $100CDN this summer, but you can already get a 512MB player for $80CDN at some stores. Multi-gigabyte players tend to command a hefty price premium, but even there, a 2GB iPod nano was on for the same as a 20GB Creative Nomad this week.

There's just no good reason to pay the premium.

Recognize excellence

[Belseth]

Isn't it about time Bush got a lifetime achievement award? A golden foot in mouth would look great on the mantel in the oval office.

Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

[filesiteguy]

However, you're still limited to 4GB of addressable memory per process.

I wonder if that is enough to run MS Office.

Re:-5, Redundant

[n8j]

"Digg for the headlines. Slashdot for the commentary."

Well said. I, like most others here, read Slashdot for the commentary, but digg defiantly has something going for it. It proves that user moderation of stories can make for better headlines.

The point is, people come to Slashdot for the commentary, but they ALSO come for the stories. If Slashdot had some system for modding stories up and down, it could be even better then it is now. Overall, Slashdot is a much better site then digg, but it could still learn something from it. Like you said, its nice to see some competition.

Re:-5, Redundant

[TimTheFoolMan]

Slashdot may have it's share of problems, but it also has some great minds that read it and contribute.

Both of them?

Tim

Re:Please come forward

[lostboy2]

What? Paris is not like Amelie? Man, you just ruined my day! :-)

Re:Please come forward

[Old Wolf]

Well, there's a dice game called "craps" that has been around since before Thomas Crapper's time (I think). I don't yet know of any game called "shits" (and I don't really want to know either!)

Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody"

[spudgun]

you don't remember back very far.

Linux was 1 GB ram 3 swap IIRC , then 2/2 split with a patch , then once people started actually making machines with 4GB - linux supported it soon after.

was a big song and dance because linux supported >2 gb before win NT/2k

Can you hear me now?

[daVinci1980]

My favorite:

"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?"
(Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon)

What an idiot. For that reason alone, I'll never sign up with Verizon while he's in charge. Hey Ivan, can you hear me now?

(Link to the originating article)

PS: If this pops up on the Wired page, it's cause I posted there. I ain't no plagiarist. ;-)

The New, New Thing in Snobbery

[nanopolitan]

Re: Compare this with the classic quotes like "640K ought to be enough for anybody".

Well, that was then, and this is now:

Anything that doesn't have zillions of gigs is now dissed away as a 'mere gadget' (see Craig Barrett on the 100 dollar laptop). Clearly, there has been a 180 degree phase shift since the original '640K' gaffe ...

Re:Anyone rember this gem from days past?

[rock_climbing_guy]

Please mod parent up. best comment yet

9/11, Etc.

[AtomicSnarl]

Ok - OT, but it needs to be said.

• Millions of Americans still think that Iraq had something to do with 911.

The 9/11 commission noted longstanding support by Saddam for AlQaeda.

• Millions also think that Bush is a good President and that he's "protecting" America by invoking a conventional or perpetual WWIII.

Yes, America is At War, as declared by Congress:

• 2.(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. [My emphasis]

The Cold War has been termed WW III, so this is now WW IV. Get over it.

Re:-5, Redundant

[kbielefe]

I agree. Modding of stories would add a nice aspect to slashdot. The other thing I would love to see is some user profile questions where you rate yourself on spectrums like liberal/conservative, evolutionism/creationism, microsoft/linux and so on, so we can add or subtract mod points like the current system for new users, short posts, long posts, etc. Although reading at +3 usually yields good results for me, sometimes an ultra-conservative creationist like myself can feel pretty alone on slashdot.

Re:-5, Redundant

[anonymo]

"Digg for the headlines. Slashdot for the commentary."

It's a dupe! :)

Re:They forgot

[beat.bolli]

Come on, Flamebait? ;-)

Firstly, I was talking about the list in TFA from Wired, not /. itself.

Secondly, the OP referred to a story about something a Finnish IFPI rep said to the Finnish media. Did you really expect Wired to pick up this story? Wired is mainstream media, as opposed to /. and Ars Technica, where the referenced article points to.

Re:Please come forward

[xx01dk]

Oops, didn't mean to offend. It's just that I've lived all over the world, and the majority of US citizens fall under some sort of misguided, puritanical, biblical "code". Sure, other societies have their stereotypes (yes I mean the French, who I am ashamed to be biased against, but I am) but you have to admit that we garner our fair share of laughter at the expense of the rest of the world.

Wow. I'm impressed.

[porkchop_d_clown]

I'm especially impressed by how you don't know the difference between the FBI and the NSA and the difference in the laws that govern those two different agencies.

And I'm most impressed by how you link to an editorial as if it were fact - an editorial that doesn't recognize that the 4th amendment only applies to US citizens, not to foreigners; or that the FISA law doesn't apply to the recording and monitoring of public events.

Here's a hint: If TV news crews can make tapes of your protest, and to do research into the backgrounds of the protestors, so can the government - and it doesn't need a warrant any more than the TV news crews do.

Re:Wow. I'm impressed.

[Vitriol Angst]

I'm especially impressed by how you don't know the difference between the FBI and the NSA and the difference in the laws that govern those two different agencies.

Hey, you can forgive me for getting them confused, can't you? They both are doing domestic spying, as well as the CIA -- so you tell me what is supposed to be the difference? Your making a nonsense argument without discussing the issue.

Yes, it is an editorial that I pointed to -- which is a good jumping off place for actual documents that support the issue at hand. And you don't seem to recognize that this is about domestic spying and not foreign. Who said the 4th amendment is about foreigners? And the FISA laws have nothing to do with recording public events -- so who are you arguing with? You're dismissing my point with a misconception -- very shrewd.

The government is using taxpayer money to monitor peace activist groups. They seem to have abandoned known hate groups and militias -- all to make sure that Quakers aren't a threat. Are you completely obtuse about the issue here? This is about monitoring opposition to the government by legal and peaceful means -- it is about power. I'm hearing little that has to do with protecting Americans from a foreign threat. We've heard the excuses for the need for all this secrecy and power, and now we've had a peak behinds the scenes. Incompetence and paranoia. It appears that the Bush administration considers its greatest threats to be from Liberals and people fighting for open government.

Again with the assertions without evidence!

[porkchop_d_clown]

Hey, you can forgive me for getting them confused, can't you? They both are doing domestic spying, as well as the CIA -- so you tell me what is supposed to be the difference? Your making a nonsense argument without discussing the issue.

Really. Please provide evidence that the CIA is engaged in domestic spying - since they are expressly forbidden from doing so.

The "issue" here is that you seem quite happy to believe whatever conspiracy theory comes your way, if it matches your pre-conceived notions. Personally, I prefer to deal in facts.

Re:Please come forward

[vortigern00]

Wow, thank you for that article. Looking back on this a week later I'm amazed at what an impact it has had on my life. First of all, this was a very eloquent essay on one of my standard rants. Second of all, it prompted me to do some serious introspection on my own adherence to society's rules. The night after you posted it I sat down and wrote a song about it, and I just finished recording the song last night. It's the best song I've written in a long time.